101018


**My understanding of how から, ので, and て differ from each other when linking
clauses:**

  * から links a subjective reason for someone's action
  * ので links an objective reason for someone's action
  * て can indicate natural cause and effect relationships (in a sense, it shows causality that's even more "objective" than ので).

But what about てから? Supposedly, てから disambiguates actions which could be
performed simultaneously or in sequence in て-sentences:

> 歯を **磨いて** テレビを見た。
>
> I brushed my teeth and watched TV. (Ambiguous whether this happened in
> sequence or at the same time).

> 歯を **磨いてから** テレビを見た。
>
> _After_ brushing my teeth, I watched TV. (てから forces the interpretation to
> be sequential).

But in this last example, does てから retain any of that "subjective reason for
action" quality, like から does? For example, is the speaker here implying that
finishing brushing his teeth played some subjective motivational role in
making him want to watch TV?

If so, does てので exist as a way to show a sequence of actions in which the
former acts as an "objective" reason for the latter action?


CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-09-15T21:46:35.233
101017
2023-09-16T04:01:47.997
51280
question
て-form particle-から
Does てから any retain "subjective reason for action" meaning from から?


No, it doesn’t, just like ８時からテレビを見た has no subjective sense.

〜ので is the conjunctive form of 〜んです, which is actually a contracted form of
〜のです. It connects to a plain form, not a て-form. (〜てんで would be an informal
contracted form of 〜ているので. It’s a different thing.)


CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-09-16T00:17:10.083
101018
2023-09-16T00:17:10.083
43676
101017
answer


ので connects to a plain form, _as an alternative to_ putting the verb in て
form. Alternately analyzed: this で is just the て form of the copula, and the の
is nominalizing. Thus, using ので, the verb is used attributively to describe a
placeholder pronoun, and then it's made back into a verb by adding the copula,
and put in て form again.

Just like ending a sentence with のだ・んだ, this tends to have an "explanatory"
function. [Wiktionary's example
is](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%81%AE%E3%81%A7)

> 今日は日曜日なので、学校に行きません。

> (Wiktionary translation) Because it's Sunday, I won't go to school.

> (My gloss) Today [topic] Sunday -is -it being, school -towards
> go-[polite]-[negative].

The "because" sense comes from the fact that we are emphasizing a state of
being: 今日は日曜日な is just "Today is Sunday", の gives us "the fact that today is
Sunday", and で makes it "it being the case that today is Sunday".

Wiktionary lists ので as a "polite form" of から, which I suppose it effectively
is - because it's a grammatical circumlocution that ends up having the same
effective meaning. から quite directly means "because" or "since" - or more
broadly, " _following_ ". This is after all the same から as in これからも "from now
[lit. here] on". (から can also follow multiple forms of speech, whereas ので
needs to follow a verb so that の can nominalize it.)

I do understand ので (and から, when used connectively) to connote some kind of
logical causation or at least sequencing, but it doesn't have to be about
reasoning. Connecting simply with て suggests to me that the two actions are
logically part of a larger whole - so から is needed after the て form for
requests (since the thing you're requesting isn't directly connected to the
current action; you're just asking for something to happen after that).


CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-09-16T04:01:47.997
101021
2023-09-16T04:01:47.997
627
101017
answer